7. SUMMARY

These are extremely good times for the inflationary cosmology. Its
qualitative
predictions have time and again provided the simplest interpretation of
observational data, while historical rivals such as cosmic strings
[22]
have faded away.
There is every prospect that upcoming observations will provide
high-accuracy
constraints on the models devised. The necessary theoretical ingredients
all appear to be in place to allow predictions of the required
sophistication to be made. We keenly await new observational data.